Chapter 2Capturing a 5,000% Return

“How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?”

—Alan Greenspan (1996)

A variety of commodity markets have made historic price moves in recent years—moves that couldn’t have been imagined before the advent of electronic trading and the economic rise of the newly developed nations.

This chapter explores a remarkable story of one of these virtually “impossible” market moves that theoretically returned 5,000% on margin—in just three months.

Even the sleaziest of investment scam artists wouldn’t promise returns of this magnitude; after all, this number sounds fairly ridiculous. Yet this seemingly impossible move was quite real. Even more remarkable is that this phenomenal annualized ...

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